The Sumac School - Year Long Wild Food and Nature Connection Course (Eastern/Western MA)

This program will take you deep into connection with the world we are a part of through the doorway of wild food and ecological design! Penetrate the wallpaper that limits our relationships with the wide world of plants and animals and start participating with your nonhuman neighbors in a meaningful way. Through a year's cycle, we'll cover a wide range of survival, practical and awareness skills with a strong focus on learning from and about eating and cultivating plants and animals. Enjoy an immediately positive impact on your diet, budget, health and sense of belonging to the land. Meets one sunday a month closest to full moon in varied locations (Northampton, Greenfield, Montague, Southampton, Amherst, Hadley, Holyoke, as well as an Eastern MA track of the program) in the Valley. Ages 15+.Gain confidence and familiarity with more than 50 edible, medicinal & useful and poisonous species of plants, and their uses - how to find, ID, harvest and prepare them into food and medicine.

• Plant and land stewarding skills: Learn how to care for and propagate plants by coppicing, grafting, layering, and germinating seeds and cuttings; and the basics of permaculture design and gardening as we explore gardens in the area. Explore a diversity of habitats and wild hot spots in the Valley as we explore gardens, streams, rivers, forests and fields together in different towns.

• Learn how to make plants into useful tools to create glue, baskets, mats, cordage and rope, tinder and insulation, making friction fires, and projectiles.
• Learn 20 mammals and 20 bird species that share our habitat, their habits, appearance, songs and tracks. Process animals into food with skinning, butchering, meat curing and hide work. We will slaughter chickens and a sheep.
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Ages 15+. Meets one weekend day a month for a full year.
For more information and registration, click here.

Requires a 200$ deposit - and supports public fruit tree planting. Limited work trade available. Register by 3/15: [email protected]

Instructor bio: Felix Lufkin has been foraging and educating about plants for 13 years. He teaches nature and gardening programs at K-12 schools in the Valley, and has offered hundreds of plant walks for the community through Acorn Kitchen and Help Yourself.

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